Message-Id: <199312231010.AA19419@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 22 Dec 93 17:17:54 GMT
From: David Carlisle <carlisle@cs.man.ac.uk>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      LaTeX2e installation
Status: R


Some (hopefully) final comments on LaTeX2e before I disappear for
Christmas.

1) If you want more details about LaTeX2e you can ftp the file
   /tex-archive/macros/latex/distribs/latex2e-test/features.tex
   from a ctan host. This has 30+ pages and may be processed with
   original LaTeX (and NFSS1, NFSS2, and LaTeX2e).

2) The installation guide that is with the distributed system says at
   one point

*** DIRCHECK STUFF HERE *** David, could you write something about the
   errors that dircheck.dtx can produce?

  As I have already had some mail asking me about this, I thought that
  I would post some information here, this was basically some ideas
  of mine for including in the file that got lost somewhere in the
  (large amount) of mail as we were making the final preparations.
  The following were my suggested additions to install.l2e


David

*************************************************************************

ideas for the install guide

New text marked with >


==============================================
To install LaTeX, you should:

 * run iniTeX on latex2e.ins, which produces the files that LaTeX needs,
  including latex2e.ltx.

 * run iniTeX on latex2e.ltx, which produces the LaTeX format.

 * put the files where LaTeX can read them.

> * Copy the file ltxcheck.tex to a directory which is *not* the
>   standard TeX input directory, and then check the LaTeX2e format
>   by running LaTeX2e on ltxcheck.tex.
>   If ltxcheck.tex reports problems with the LaTeX2e format,
>   see the PROBLEMS section below.

==============================================


If your TeX has the `feature' that it can't find out if a file exists
anywhere other than the current directory then you unfortunately have
to write (or rather update in this case) the file texsys.cfg. Look
carefully at the documentation in this file. It should give you
examples how to deal with this situation.

> You will be informed if you need to edit texsys.cfg when you
> process the file ltxcheck with latex2e as the last stage of the
> installation procedure above.

==============================================

PROBLEMS

> delete
> *** DIRCHECK STUFF HERE *** David, could you write something about the
>   errors that dircheck.dtx can produce?

Then add a subsection

>
> to end of file, all new.

Running ltxcheck.tex

Because of the `feature' described above it is possible that the
latex2e format made by the distributed files can not find any files on
your system, except those in the current directory.

After some of the tests made by ltxcheck you may be asked to edit
texsys.cfg. Once the file has been edited you just need to re-make the
format by running `initex' on latex2e.ltx. You do not need to `unpack'
all the distribution again. Note that texsys.cfg is read very early in
the process of making LateX, before the usual LaTeX commands such as
\newcommand have been defined. You must only use primitive commands in
this file.

Checks run by ltxcheck:

1) It is useful for LaTeX to know the `current directory syntax' if
   the current operating system has such a concept.
   so the file abc.tex in the current directory may be specifed by
   ./abc.tex   on unix and most DOS TeX's,
   []abc.tex   on VMS
   :abc.tex    on OzTeX on a Mac.
   The above possibilities will be found automatically during the
   installation, however if non of these syntaxes works on your
   system, the interal macro \@currdir will be set to be empty.

   ltxcheck will report this. If your system does have a notion of a
   current directory, you can define \@currdir in texsys.tex.
   You could also report this to the latex-bug address, so that
   later releases can automatically cope with your system.

2) The \input@path.
   On some systems TeX can not check whether a file exists before
   trying to input it, unless the filename is expressed as a full path
   name, including the directory. On these systems LaTeX needs to be
   given a list of directories in which to look for files.
   ltxcheck will try to locate article.cls. If it fails to find it
   (and you have placed it in the standard TeX input directory) then
   you must define \input@path in texsys.cfg. The comments in the
   distributed texsys.cfg contain examples, but only you know the
   directories and syntax that apply to your installation.
   We hope to build up a better collection of examples in future
   releases of LaTeX2e, as it is tested on more Operating Systems.

3) The final checks test that you are running a recent version of TeX.
   If ltxcheck reports that you have TeX2, then you should try to
   upgrade TeX (and rebuild LaTeX) as soon as possible. LaTeX2e may be
   used with TeX2, but certain features will be missing, and you will
   not be able to use the new (8-bit) font families that are being
   produced.

   If ltxcheck reports that your TeX is older than 3.141, you will see
   some strange messages during the installation, as earlier TeX's had
   a bug which meant that certain line breaks were printed on the
   terminal as ^^J rather than as a new line.